


Faith

by kangeiko



Category: Harry Potter - Rowling
Genre: Canon-Compliant, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-04-25
Updated: 2006-04-25
Packaged: 2017-10-08 06:33:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/73712
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kangeiko/pseuds/kangeiko
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lavender believes. Set during Book 5. Bitching, jealousy, inadequacy: all those beloved things that form girlhood.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Faith

  
Lavender believes in the art of Divination, if Divination ever required belief. No: it is perseverance that is needed, and it is perseverance that Hermione lacks. Lavender can't help but feel the tiniest bit smug at that; that perfect, wonderful Hermione - so suddenly the belle of the ball when she was nothing, really; nothing at all - the girl-wonder of Hogwarts, couldn't manage something that came as easily to Lavender as breathing.

It is fifth year, and everyone else is worried about who's going crazy and who isn't, but Lavender isn't. She's watching them all run about, shouting at teachers and landing in detention and wondering if they're going to die soon.

Lavender has more important things to worry about: Professor Trelawney has asked her to do a reading. (And she'd begged and pleaded with Professor McGonagall and finally obtained a Hogsmeade pass._ I can't use the Professor's deck!_ Old stony-eyed McGonagall had pursed her lips but said nothing, and pushed the permission slip into her outstretched hands.)

Now, sat in Professor Trelawney's office, schoolbag on her knees, Lavender wonders if she's been chosen by the right deck; if it will work this time.

(It never has before, but that doesn't matter.)

When Professor Trelawney finally enters, it is in a flutter of skirts and incense, sweeping a shawl around her shoulders "Ah, my dear, I have the most perfect deck for you to use!" Her hands are flitting about like startled birds and Lavender has just enough time to think, _something's gone wrong,_ before the Professor is spilling a gaudy green-and-red deck across the table.

"Yes, Professor," she says obediently, and reads death and horror in the foreign cards and their malformed shapes.

"I think I'm going to be dismissed, Lavender," Professor Trelawney says, her voice too high-pitched for the small room.

Lavender flinches. "Don't be silly, Professor." She reads the hand dealt, and tries to make sense of it. There's nothing there: empty space and chaos, and she knows that she's blind to it.

Professor Trelawney's hands still flitter above the table, aimlessly rearranging the cards as if she could force them to fit her view of destiny, and Lavender's hands inch back across the tablecloth and beneath. Small schoolgirl hands slide furtively into the cool leather of the schoolbag, and she can feel the crispness of the deck wrapping, pristine and unbroken.

"I don't see anything like that," she says, and,_ I don't see anything at all_, she thinks.

She hates Hermione that little bit more, and the wrapping paper is hard and cool beneath the touch of her fingertips.

Later, maybe whole days and nights and weeks later, Lavender sits in the empty Divination classroom and thinks, _I saw this._ The stools are over-turned; the books in disarray. There is nothing but chaos here, and nothing but chaos outside.

She sets out the unopened deck and watches the crackle of power across it for long moments. She should really get back to the girls' dormitory. She'll be in trouble if caught, and Seamus wouldn't be pleased to see her wasting her time with this. "I swear, sometimes I think you have a bigger crush on old Trelawney than you do on me!"

And she'd broken up with him, just like that. (It had lasted a whole week.)

The paper isn't sealed, precisely, just folded in severe cuts and lines, prohibiting investigating. She touches a corner, drawing a finger against the grain, and it pops open: a walnut cracking wide to reveal the sweet meat inside.

The deck sits, fat and heavy, in the centre of the table, brown paper swaddling it as if it was a baby and not a weapon. Doubtless that's how Hermione would think of it, Lavender thinks, with the same disdain she holds for all such things. For a witch, Hermione could be a cynical bitch at times. "She'd look at you and only see paper," she says to the deck, and it pulses with life at her words. She smiles. "Weak paper."

The pulsing intensifies; indignant, and Lavender fights not to laugh. She picks it up, stroking over the crest. She deals the hand, smoothing each card carefully as she flips it over. She is as careful with each card as she would be with the wild animals she's handled, or the deadly spells she's learned. It is not a child and not a toy, despite what those other eyes see. Only Lavender can see the weapon as she lays out the spread and Reads.

And the cards -

The cards spell nothing at all.

Hermione would be laughing about now, Lavender thinks, and doesn't care. She knows better. She knows exactly what to do when the cards show her nothing but chaos and death. The deck pulses softly in her hands as she gathers it up and starts again. _Divination requires perseverance._

She lays the next spread.

And the next.

  
*

fin


End file.
